


fancy you

by bunnydol



Series: dykevt [4]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Brief mentions of marijuana, F/F, Partying, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 04:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20614751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnydol/pseuds/bunnydol
Summary: Yeonwoo might not usually be one for parties, but she knows it's about time she sees her friends perform in their musical project—not a band, Jessica insists—7QUEEN. What she didn't account for is meeting their drummer.





	fancy you

**Author's Note:**

> translation note: Geomi = Spider! (i first had it translated through the fic but decided since it's a name, to keep it in the original Korean)

Yeonwoo’s thesis is due in a month, and she’s up to her neck in papers written in the kind of academic language she’d generally love to spend her time unpacking, if she weren’t two months behind her (admittedly overambitious) schedule. She tries to explain this to Jia-li—her roommate and self-proclaimed expert ambivert—and is expectantly met with a blank stare, followed by a gentle shove into her bedroom.

“You don’t even have to stay past midnight,” Jia-li promises, as though Yeonwoo won’t know she’s lying through her teeth. Jessica’s parties rarely _start_ before eleven. “Dress up a bit! Get a cute girl’s number! 7QUEEN are playing a set, anyway, and you don’t want to break Seungja’s heart by skipping out again.”

Much to Yeonwoo’s dismay, Jia-li managed to make a point—Yeonwoo hadn’t been able to attend one of 7QUEEN’s shows yet, despite her former mentor and good friend Choi Seungja being the leader and main rapper of the musical project (not a band; self-identification is to be respected no matter how ridiculous it may sound to an outsider, Yeonwoo fully believes). She knows that Jessica is also a member, as well as Jeonghwa, Jessica’s roommate and Yeonwoo’s first and last one night stand. There’s no hard feelings between them, but Yeonwoo is an awkward person by nature, and she never quite got the hang of interacting normally with someone after you’ve seen them naked. Aside from Jia-li, who firmly believes that home is where you can walk around in as much or as little clothing as you’d like.

But again, Seungja. Besides, Yeonwoo hasn’t seen Somin in a while, and hearing her voice is always a lovely way to spend an evening. Somin is the main singer of 7QUEEN, and if she’s there so will be Sooyoung, her girlfriend and Yeonwoo’s unofficial Best Friend. She’s someone else that Yeonwoo hasn’t seen in a while, as a recent graduate now working full-time as a modern dance teacher to kids. Maybe Yeonwoo should have done something like that, instead of going for a 5 year accelerated Masters in archives and library studies. Maybe she has some regrets.

Yeonwoo sighs. Their cat Geomi jumps down from where he’d been lying on her bed and nudges his head against her leg, leaving black fur against the fabric of her pants. “I don’t even have anything to wear,” she says, which is true insofar as she has exactly one outfit (turtleneck and corduroys) and it’s not exactly one that she associates with the kind of parties that Jessica throws. To her dismay, Jia-li is more than familiar with this aspect of her, and snorts.

“You’re a lesbian. Everyone just wears whatever they normally wear to parties, but with more glitter on their faces.”

“I don’t want any glitter on my face,” Yeonwoo says, leaning down to scratch Geomi between his ears. Glitter takes too long to get off—she knows this from years spent living with Jia-li.

“Okay, then don’t. Wear that black mockneck you have, with the high waisted brown corduroys and your beat-up Docs. Boom.” 

“Mockneck” sounds like a fake word, but Yeonwoo is nothing if not trained to pick up context clues to understand a deeper meaning. It’s why she’s doing her thesis on subtextual female homoromanticism within the modern feminist Korean literary movement. She closes her door on Jia-li’s face, ignoring the other’s call of “be ready by ten!” while Geomi scurries out. A traitor.

Yeonwoo presses the power button on her flip phone, watching the small outer screen light up with a clock declaring it 9:24 pm. Of course, she thinks. Yeonwoo sighs, reaching up to ruffle a hand through her short hair; the top is getting long enough that it falls in front of her eyes, while the sides have grown a bit past the point to still be classified as an undercut. If only she at least had enough notice to give herself a bit of a trim beforehand.

Nonetheless, Yeonwoo changes out of her current outfit to the one Jia-li had recommended, which is almost identical if slightly more form-fitting. The alleged mockneck is loose around her throat, and sheer enough that she feels the need to throw on a bra to keep the entire world from seeing the clear outline of her chest. Jia-li would call her a perpetrator of the patriarchy, but Jia-li also wears her breasts like a fashion statement, with ever-changing jewelry pierced through the nipples. Yeonwoo’s always been a little more...reserved.

As Yeonwoo expected, they don’t leave at 10, or even 10:30; she kills some time skimming articles for her thesis, while Jia-li runs around their apartment in various states of (un)dress. By the time they actually head out, Yeonwoo has managed to read and annotate an analysis of Han Kang’s _The Vegetarian_ as an allegory for male destruction of female sexuality through corrective rape and enforced dehumanization. Not bad, she allows herself.

The Uber to Jessica’s apartment—Jia-li’s treat, as she wisely predicted a travel cost would further deter Yeonwoo from attending—is pretty quick; they could have walked if they really wanted to, but Yeonwoo is never one to turn down free transport. They get out of the car when they arrive outside the duplex, thanking the driver while Jia-li checks her lipstick in the side mirror. She’s not looking for a hook-up tonight, as far as Yeonwoo is aware. (She’s been seeing some idol girl on the downlow, which Yeonwoo tries to hear as little about as possible for plausible deniability. Gossip isn’t really her thing, anyway. If Jia-li were living with Seungyeon, for example, that might have been a bit more of an issue.) Either way, Jia-li never turns down the opportunity to dress herself up. Yeonwoo has the exact opposite problem.

She tugs self-consciously at her belt loops, the soft material providing some comfort. She trails behind Jia-li as the other walks up the stairs to Jessica’s apartment, swinging the door open without hesitation. Something else Yeonwoo could not relate to; she gets anxious if she leaves her apartment unlocked for a quick grocery run.

Yeonwoo takes her phone out of her pocket and presses the power button again. 11:10, the screen says. She is _not_ getting home before midnight. 

Jia-li tugs her inside, and Yeonwoo stumbles forward. She slides the thin phone back in her pocket. “We’re here!” Jia-li calls out, walking further inside. There’s a faint undertone of music, what she recognizes as the steady beat of a drumset. Then comes the high-pitched greeting that could only belong to Jessica, allowing Yeonwoo’s lips to twitch upwards. She does like Sica, even though they might not have the exact same definition of what constitutes a good time.

They reach the living room while Jessica is straddling Seungja’s shoulders, screwing what Yeonwoo is pretty sure might be a mini strobe light to the ceiling. The cord is pinned back and plugged into two extension cords. Yeonwoo wonders if she should begin to fear for someone’s safety. “Aww, you brought Yeonwoo!” Jessica calls out, looking down from her precarious spot. Her left hand is holding onto Seungja’s jaw, presumably to keep herself in place. It looks like the world’s least effective lesbian sex position.

Seungja is unable to speak with her current situation, but she shoots the newcomers a quick eye smile. Her arms tighten on Jessica’s thighs. Yeonwoo smiles and nods at her too, while Jia-li gets to chatting with Jessica. 

Yeonwoo’s eyes trail across the room. It doesn’t look as though the party has officially begun (again, as expected); Jeonghwa is lounging on a couch, scrolling through her phone and quietly playing some Western artist through its speakers. She waves without looking up, right thumb dancing across what Yeonwoo assumes is her keyboard. She never got the whole smartphone thing, herself. Yeonwoo would rather spend less time online than more.

There are a few other girls helping set up the drink table in the kitchen—Somin and Sooyoung, she realizes, when the one on the left squeezes the thigh of the girl stirring jungle juice. Very Sooyoung. Yeonwoo smiles, and walks towards them.

Sooyoung turns around, as though fine tuned to the sound of Yeonwoo’s Docs on the floor. She throws her arms out wide, knocking Somin lightly in the shoulder during the process.

“Ah! I almost spilled it that time,” Somin warns, turning her head to see what got Sooyoung’s attention. She makes eye contact with Yeonwoo and also throws her arms out, stirring spoon still in hand and splattering mixed alcohol across the table. “Yonu!”

Yeonwoo rolls her eyes, but she nonetheless allows the two to pull her into a joint hug. “You guys act like you thought I died,” she says.

“You know, I wondered,” Sooyoung scolds. “I know you’re in thesis mode, but at least send a text like a normal person. Get an actual phone if your dinosaur makes it annoying.”

“Thanks, but I’m good,” Yeonwoo says. She does feel bad about her self-imposed isolation, however. Sooyoung _is_ her unofficial Best Friend. Maybe Yeonwoo will suck it up and reopen her Kakao account, so she can at least use the app on her PC. Either way, she manages to detangle herself and shoots Somin a smile. “I hear you guys are performing tonight?”

Somin smiles her 100 watt smile. “We are! We’re all set up in the living room. Woozi has started keeping a drumset here, since it’s just easier than transporting it for our practices, so we figured we might as well make use of it.”

Yeonwoo hadn’t quite gotten a good look at the living room before scurrying off to say hi, but she does recall the sound of percussion as she walked in. It’s trailed off by now, anyway. Her eyebrows draw together. “Woozi?” she asks.

“Her real name is Jieun,” Somin says. “We were in a few classes together my first year, before she dropped out. She’s like, an actual _producer_ now. With actual _songs_. It’s pretty sick.”

“She can also hear you,” comes an unfamiliar voice. Yeonwoo resists the urge to jump, while Sooyoung squeaks in surprise. The three of them turn around and face a woman that Yeonwoo can only assume to be the Woozi in question.

The first thing Yeonwoo notices about Jieun is simple—she’s really, really short. After she registers this comes the bright red of her hair, shaved on the sides and resting in a short mullet at the nape of her neck. She’s dressed in a patterned button-up decorated with multicoloured squares, paired with thigh-length jean shorts and red and black socks that reach the top of her calves. A black biker jacket obscures what appears to be a quite stocky frame. Her sneakers are the kind of clean white that Yeonwoo can never keep up after the first week of owning an item, and decorated with red accents. Her lobes are stretched around small black gauges, and a blue bandana is tied around her forehead.

What this means: Jieun looks like the kind of dyke that Yeonwoo associates with 90s pulp comics. It’s strangely intimidating, even while she looks as though she’d reach the bottom of Yeonwoo’s jaw. Maybe her nose, on tiptoes.

“Speak of the devil,” Sooyoung stage whispers, while Jieun rolls her eyes and heads further into the kitchen. She grabs a mason jar—no plastic cups, Jessica had decreed, ever the environmentalist—and nudges Somin out of her place in front of the jungle juice.

“Let me know if it’s any good,” Somin chirps. Then she sticks her thumb towards her left. “This is Yeonwoo, by the way. She’s working on her thesis on like, books.”

A blush unexpectedly rises on Yeonwoo’s cheeks. She slouches subconsciously, before straightening up as Jieun’s eyes move to her. Jieun raises the jar to her lips and takes a sip, her gaze traveling Yeonwoo as though she’s looking for something in specific. Yeonwoo just wishes she knew what.

“Well, it’s on implicit lesbian romanticism within the Korean feminist literary movement,” Yeonwoo elaborates, and uses her index finger to push her round glasses up her nose. Jieun’s eyebrows raise a bit, now.

“Jieun,” the shorter finally says. Yeonwoo doesn’t bother reminding her they’d already established this. “I’d be interested in hearing more about that, if you’re sticking around after the show.”

_The show_ makes it sound like they’re performing at an actual venue instead of just her band member’s apartment—but then again, knowing Jessica’s parties, it might end up being packed enough to resemble a proper concert. Yeonwoo doesn’t exactly love the idea of it, but she also can’t deny her intrigue.

“That sounds nice,” she says. Somin and Sooyoung are whispering next to her, but she chooses to ignore them.

Jieun gives her a small, close-mouthed smile, pushing out the platinum bead of her labret piercing. She turns around to head back into the living room. “The jungle juice is alright,” she mentions, not bothering to face them again. “Could go with more tequila.”

“Any more tequila would be lethal,” Somin disagrees, but the other has already left.

The show is—a lot more than what Yeonwoo would have expected. Yeonwoo doesn’t really have that much of a musical preference, though she tends to gravitate between a mix of female indie artists and Western hip-hop; she generally finds herself enjoying any genre, as long as it’s well executed. 7QUEEN’s music, however, does not seem to have a genre under which it consistently falls. They open with a bubblegum pop song that has Yeonwoo nodding her head along with the beat, before subsequently moving towards hard hip-hop, a few ballads, and one notable Pansori/EDM duet between Seungja and Jessica. Jieun stays next to them on the makeshift stage, playing the keyboard with a stone face as her groupmates share a rap about a piggy bank. They lean together at one point, and Jessica licks a stripe over Seungja’s exposed collarbone. The crowd, consisting of what Yeonwoo suspects might be the entire lesbian and bisexual woman population of Seoul, erupts in cheers.

Some things, Yeonwoo accepts, she will never fully understand.

Several times throughout the show, Yeonwoo notices Jieun’s eyes on her. The room had been buzzing by midnight, and by the end of the show—half past 1 in the morning, the screen on her phone thoughtfully informed Yeonwoo—it became claustrophobic. Yeonwoo had gradually backed away from the crowd between songs, pressed against the wall in an open space by the door to Jessica's balcony. Even then, when she looked towards the stage, she found Jieun’s eyes already on her. Maybe she just needs a better prescription.

The group plays one final song, and someone throws a bra at Somin. Yeonwoo is 90% certain it's Sooyoung. Somin sings through her smile, throwing the purple lace over her shoulder and wearing it proudly.

“Thanks for listening to 7QUEEN, and enjoy the rest of the night, bitches!” Jessica yells out at the end of the set, and the crowd erupts once again. Yeonwoo winces at the noise, and carefully slips out the door.

She’s unsurprised to find the balcony already occupied, a few people sitting around the picnic table and sharing a joint. They look towards the door at the sound of it opening, and Yeonwoo’s lips turn up into a smile as she recognizes the group.

“Duuuude,” Minjoo drawls, her head resting against Mingfei’s shoulder as her girlfriend takes a drag. Even in the dim light, Yeonwoo can recognize her blown pupils. She chuckles, standing next to the younger and gently ruffling her bangs. Yeonwoo has shared a few classes with Minjoo, a fashion student who took some literature courses out of interest. She notes her fellow lit coursemate Hana sitting opposite the table, her own girlfriend Seungyeon present as ever. “How’s the thesis coming?” Minjoo asks.

Yeonwoo winces reflexively. Mingfei nods in sympathy, and holds out the joint to her. Yeonwoo doesn’t smoke all that often; she used to have a nasty cigarette habit, which took too much effort to kick for her to really look back. Weed doesn’t have quite the same association, though. She takes a quick inhale to calm down from the stress of prolonged human interaction, and looks to her side to pass the joint. Seungyeon holds her left hand up as a polite refusal, so she reaches out instead to Hana, who grabs it with her right hand. Yeonwoo realizes the two are holding hands beneath the table, and regains a bit of hope in love.

“You’re like, the smartest person I know, man. Don’t stress it,” Hana says wisely. The joint is dangling between her fingers, red embers illuminating the green of the table. Yeonwoo laughs, but it comes out a bit like a sigh.

“Thanks, man,” she says teasingly, though she’s not sure it comes across in her tone. She leans her palms against the table, cracking her back as she leans forward. She winces at the sound.

They chat for a few minutes, Yeonwoo taking some short puffs as the joint makes its way around the circle. Mingfei and Minjoo are apparently serious about releasing their own clothing line, and are significantly less anxious about their upcoming graduation than Yeonwoo is. If only she had the luxury of being in a happy four-year long relationship with someone who shares her interests and hobbies, she contemplates. They’re both finishing their senior projects, Minjoo showing Yeonwoo pictures she took on her smartphone of her almost completed sustainable faux-fur jacket line. It’s not quite Yeonwoo’s style by any means, but it is _very_ Minjoo. 

Minjoo is scrolling through to pictures of Mingfei’s senior project—a collection of hand-painted, hand-sewn denim articles covered in artsy symbols and aphorisms—when the balcony door swings back open, a few voices trailing outwards. Somin’s head is the first to pop out, shining with sweat and a bright smile planted on her lips. 

“Room for a few more?” she asks, before stepping outside anyway. Jieun follows her, and then Jeonghwa, looking angelic in the kitchen’s fluorescent light. Her hand is on the small of Jieun’s back, Yeonwoo can’t help but notice. Her brain is a little bit foggy from both the drink she had inside and now the joint, so it takes her a moment after Jeonghwa speaks to realize that what she said was addressed to her.

“Sorry, what was that? I zoned out for a moment,” Yeonwoo apologizes.

Jeonghwa laughs, the sound like church bells. Her hand is no longer on Jieun’s back, moving to rest around Somin’s shoulders as the younger squeezes in the bench next to Minjoo. Jeonghwa is a very tactile person, Yeonwoo reminds herself. She’s been on the receiving end of the other’s platonic affection many times herself. (She’s also been in Jeonghwa’s bed herself, but that’s besides the point.) “I asked how you liked your first 7QUEEN show,” Jeonghwa says.

“You guys are very talented,” Yeonwoo says honestly. “Did you make all those songs yourselves?”

“That’s Uji! Our Jieun,” Somin coos, reaching across the table to where Jieun is still standing and squeezing her hands around the air. Yeonwoo wonders how long she’s been outside, since she does not recall Somin being this...intoxicated on stage.

“Sick,” Hana says, turning around to face Jieun. She raises her hand in an awkward wave, like she’s not quite sure how to greet new people. Yeonwoo can relate.

“Seungja and Jisoo help with lyrics and beats,” Jieun says, rolling on the backs of her feet. She looks uncomfortable being the subject of all their attention. “Well, Seungja helps with lyrics, Jisoo helps with beats.”

“Speaking of, where are they? Don’t answer if it’s something I don’t want to hear,” Mingfei asks. Jieun’s lips twitch upwards, and she chuckles a bit. It’s the first time Yeonwoo has heard her laugh, however a small one, and she finds it nice.

“I won’t tell you, then,” Jieun says, to Mingfei’s gag and Somin’s whistle.

Minjoo rolls her eyes and nudges Mingfei. “Don’t act like you haven’t fucked them both,” she says.

“At separate times! And you were there too, so it doesn’t count,” Mingfei shoots back. Yeonwoo doesn’t think she’ll ever get them.

While the couple continues bickering around her, Yeonwoo finds another body moving into the standing space between either side of the table. Her eyes trail to her right, and she is once again unsurprised to see Jieun settling in the newly occupied spot.

“I meant what I said. You guys are really good,” Yeonwoo finds herself saying. She leans back so that her arms are no longer leaning on the table, allowing more space for Jieun to come in. The shorter stays in place, giving Yeonwoo a contemplative look.

“Thank you,” is what Jieun finally says. Her eyes dart down, and then back up. “I like your tattoo.”

Right—Yeonwoo had rolled her sleeves up during the show, exposing the ink on her right forearm. The stylized outline of a black cat wrapped around a housepot of _sansevieria trifasciata_. The cat’s eyes are uncoloured and stark against the monochrome fill of his fur, while his tail constricts around the equally uncoloured pot.

Yeonwoo’s lips twitch upwards. She holds her arm up so that Jieun could get a better look in the dim light. “Thanks. It’s supposed to be my cat, Geomi. Though I guess it can be any black cat.” She’s never been the best at making conversation.

“Your cat, Geomi,” Jieun restates; not like she’s looking for a confirmation, but like she needed to hear the words in her own voice. She barely brushes the tips of her fingers against the skin, and Yeonwoo sees hints of ink on the backs of her own hands. Another small laugh escapes from Jieun’s lips. “And he’s with a snake plant.”

The recognition strikes some long-latent cord in the pit of Yeonwoo’s stomach. She thinks of a meme Sooyoung showed her once: _Haha, hope this doesn’t ignite something in me._ (Sooyoung had used it in response to news that Somin had been cast as King Arthur in a woman-only performance of the musical _Excalibur_. It did, in fact, ignite something within her. Yeonwoo couldn’t exactly blame her, given the situation.)

“They were my first plants,” Yeonwoo explains. Jieun hums, in what she interprets as approval.

“I like spider plants, myself,” Jieun says, with a tone that makes Yeonwoo think she might be teasing. Flirting? Yeonwoo certainly can’t tell these things.

Yeonwoo doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing. She has never felt the need to fill a silence, because to Yeonwoo, silence isn’t empty; it’s a place of comfort. Yeonwoo would rather think than talk any day—Jia-li likes to joke that she must not want a girlfriend so much as a telepath. She’s not exactly right, though, because Yeonwoo doesn’t want all of her thoughts to be read. Just the important ones, which are often the hardest to speak.

It’s no bother, though. Jieun seems equally content to lounge around and listen as the rest of their friends-slash-bandmates yell and joke with each other. Yeonwoo had forgotten how loud Somin and Seungyeon get in a room together, after their breakup two years ago had left them in the awkward pseudo-divorce same-friend-group-as-your-ex situation. If their easy rapport is any indication, things seem to have mended between the two of them. Yeonwoo is infinitely grateful that Sooyoung was still on the dance floor, as the nuclear combination of the three of them might be a bit too much for her head at 2 am.

“I’m gonna head out,” Jieun says eventually, quiet enough that Yeonwoo figures it’s directed towards her rather than an announcement to the group at large. “If you see Jisoo tell her thanks for hosting.”

Yeonwoo feels something settle in her stomach that feels a bit like disappointment, but she doesn’t know why. “I’ll come in with you,” she suggests. Jieun looks at her for a moment, and then nods.

She intends to slip out peacefully, but Mingfei meets her eyes as she steps away. The younger looks towards Jieun, hand already turning the doorknob, and smirks. Yeonwoo decides not to spend too much time lingering on it, preferring instead to follow Jieun as she slides through the door into the kitchen.

The party has a different energy now, the presence of a live band replaced by Sica’s carefully curated party playlist. As Yeonwoo had suspected, the precariously screwed light fixture is in fact a strobe light, pulsing along with the beat of the EDM. Yeonwoo is very suddenly hit with the realization that she wants to go home, too.

“I’m going to look for my roommate,” she says, hoping she might catch a stroke of luck and have an inevitably plastered and overgenerous Jia-li offer to pay for another ride home. Jieun looks at her again, expression unreadable. She tucks her hands into the pockets of her jacket and leans against the wall that separates the kitchen from the living room.

Jieun doesn’t say anything, but she stays in place when Yeonwoo slips into the chaos. The strobe light alone would be enough of a headache, not even taking into account the crammed bodies around her and the stench of Somin’s jungle juice. Yeonwoo grimaces, but sludges through. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long for her to find Jia-li—or rather, to find Sooyoung, who is dancing with Jia-li in the way that they like to do where they’re really both just trying to show off their own dance moves. Mingfei sometimes indulges in their little competition, as does Chun, an underclassman with feet like lightning. 

This appears to be one of their more casual competitions, as Sooyoung lets out a “whoop!” upon seeing Yeonwoo over her dance partner’s shoulders, and detangles herself to instead throw her arms around the newcomer. “Dance with me!” she yells, a bit louder than needed to be heard.

Yeonwoo is already shaking her head, so Sooyoung pouts and stills her head. She squeezes Yeonwoo’s cheeks together, and Yeonwoo waits patiently for her to get bored and let go. “I’m heading home, actually. I wanted to check if Jia-li would like to go back together,” Yeonwoo explains, rubbing her sore cheeks.

Jia-li perks up at her name. “I’m goooood! Promised Jisoo and Jeonghwa I’d help clean up,” she says, which means she’s probably just going to crash drunk on their couch.

Sooyoung stays pouting as she sways along to the music. “This weekend! 96-line movie night! We’ll make it happen,” she insists, poking Yeonwoo on her chest. She then sees something over the taller’s shoulders that makes her clap her hands together. “Hey, do you know where Somin went? Seungja and Sica are back on the floor, which means Sica’s room is free for canoodling.”

“She’s on the balcony last I saw. Also, please never use that word again,” Yeonwoo pleads. She’s pretty sure the words go in one ear and out the other, as Soonyoung leans up to press a sloppy kiss on her cheek and darts off towards the kitchen. Jia-li whistles, shooting out a, “get her, tiger!” Yeonwoo needs more single friends, she thinks.

She bids Jia-li adieu with a silent nod, the other already back to dancing. Yeonwoo smiles and turns around, fond for her friends against her best judgement. They’re good people. She really should spend more time with them, instead of holing herself in the library and panicking about the state of her academic career. 

Yeonwoo is thinking about this as she runs into Seungja and Jessica on the dancefloor, Seungja with one arm around her partner’s waist and one holding a mason jar up to her lips. Her short hair is pointing in all directions, and the top half of her shirt is unbuttoned to reveal the pale cream of her skin. Jessica is chatting to someone next to them—Chun, Yeonwoo realizes after a moment, dressed in a muscle shirt with a print of Janet Jackson embellished on the front.

“You guys did really well,” she tells Seungja, who’s the first to notice her. She smiles, retracting her arm from Jessica’s waist to ruffle Yeonwoo’s hair.

“Thanks, kid,” she says, like she isn’t less than a year older. “You should come to one of our real gigs, next time.”

“We’re playing at the Velvet Lounge next Saturday,” Jessica chirps in. 

“I’ll see if I can make it,” Yeonwoo says. “I’m about to head home, but I just wanted to thank you for hosting tonight. Uh, Woozi also asked me to pass on her thanks.”

Seungja whistles lowly. Jessica wiggles her eyebrows. Chun snickers behind her hand, and Yeonwoo wonders what joke she’s missed.

“Have fun with that, Yonu. My wrists were sore for days,” Seungja says, a bit wistfully. Yeonwoo is confused for a moment, before realizing her mistake in mentioning Jieun and going home within the same breath.

“I didn’t mean it like—actually, you guys aren’t going to listen to me, are you,” Yeonwoo mumbles, feeling a flush of embarrassment run through her body.

“Make sure to wear protection,” Jessica coos. Yeonwoo doesn’t bother reminding her that it doesn’t even _work_ that way.

She shuffles away from the giggling trio, back in the direction of the kitchen. Who knows if Jieun is even still there—Yeonwoo hadn’t expected to be gone for more than 5 minutes, much less the fifteen that must have taken. She had underestimated her friends and their nosiness levels, apparently.

Yeonwoo has convinced herself that Jieun must be far gone by the time she gets to the corner that the shorter tucked herself into. To her pleasant surprise, Yeonwoo spots bright red hair against the cream of the kitchen wall. A smile subconsciously finds its way to her lips, and she takes a moment to brush any nonexistent flint off her corduroys before stepping into Jieun’s line of sight—or rather, what would have been, if she weren’t looking at her phone.

Unsure how to bring Jieun’s attention to her, Yeonwoo transfers her weight between her feet. She waits what feels like twenty minutes, but is realistically probably that many seconds until Jieun’s gaze travels upwards to meet hers. She clicks what Yeonwoo assumes is the power button on her phone, and puts it in her jacket pocket.

“How are you getting home?” Jieun asks, head leaning backwards against the wall to meet Yeonwoo’s eyes. Yeonwoo thinks of what Seungja had said, and blushes. She hopes it’s not visible in the dim light.

“I’ll probably walk,” Yeonwoo replies. The one thing she regrets about her phone’s lack of internet capability is that it means she’s unable to look up directions, but she thinks she remembers how to get back to her apartment. It’s not the first time she’s been here, by any means, and certainly not the first time she’s left on her own. Well—kind of on her own. 

Jieun nods, and steps away from the wall. She begins to weave her way through the crowd, Yeonwoo following shortly after with her longer strides. They reach the front door and Jieun looks over her shoulder at Yeonwoo, then steps outside.

They continue down the duplex’s stairs until they reach the sidewalk, where the two settle down by a motorcycle parked neatly against the curb. Music faintly travels through the air, electropop mingling with the sounds of crickets and the stray car driving by. Yeonwoo pulls her phone out of her own pocket and clicks the button to light up the screen. Half past two. A yawn suddenly spreads up her throat, and she covers her mouth to be polite. When she opens her eyes, Jieun is looking at her again.

Unsure what to make of the situation, Yeonwoo finds herself again thinking about what Seungja and Jessica had implied. The earlier heat of embarrassment returns to the pit of her stomach, this time feeling a bit like something more dangerous. Alarm bells ring in her brain, and she clears her throat, mind racing for words.

“I’m heading this way,” she finally says, pointing over her shoulder. Jieun stays looking at her, and Yeonwoo feels like she’s being tested. She wonders if this is how it will be when she’s defending her thesis. Then she thinks about doing something really stupid, like asking Jieun if she wants to go home with her, and decides it will probably be a little different.

“What year were you born?” Yeonwoo continues, to keep herself from saying something else. She isn’t sure where the question came from—maybe she felt like she should be calling Jieun “unnie,” despite her small stature. Something about the way she carries herself makes her seem older. The retro styling makes her feel like a relic from a not-so-distant past.

Jieun blinks slowly, as though that isn’t what she expected to hear. Which is really fair enough. “96,” she eventually says.

“Oh,” Yeonwoo replies, smartly. “We’re the same age, then.” She almost asks what Jieun’s astrological sign is, and decides she needs to spend less time around Jia-li.

“Fancy that,” Jieun responds. They continue standing on the sidewalk, cool morning air blowing around them. Yeonwoo pulls the sleeves of her shirt back down to cover her bare skin. Above their heads, the muffled sound of EDM passes through the street.

“Me, Sooyoung and Jia-li are doing a 96-line movie night sometime this weekend, if you want to join,” Yeonwoo finds herself saying. She prays that Sooyoung isn’t too drunk to remember her suggestion. “It’ll probably be at our place. As in, mine and Jia-li’s.”

Jieun assesses her with the same strong gaze as before, then brings her shoulders up in a shrug. “Alright,” she says.

“Cool,” Yeonwoo responds. Her brain rushes to figure out the logistics of what she just announced. “Uh, it’ll probably be tomorrow? Or tonight, I guess, technically.”

“Cool,” Jieun repeats. There’s something else in her eyes now—amusement, maybe? Glad that at least _she_ finds humour in Yeonwoo’s semi-intoxicated rambling.

“Well, I’ll go head home now. My bed is calling,” Yeonwoo says, then mentally flicks herself in the forehead. My bed is calling? Really? Didn’t she decide _against_ asking Jieun to go home with her?

Jieun doesn’t seem to take notice to the implications in Yeonwoo’s words, rustling through her pocket and pulling out her smartphone. “Can I have your number?” she asks.

Yeonwoo’s brain short circuits. “Uh.”

“So you can text me the details,” Jieun continues, when she realizes Yeonwoo wasn’t going to add anything else.

“Right!” Yeonwoo says, feeling silly for her internal crisis when Jieun hadn’t even been asking in a gay way. “Right, I can do that.”

She tells Jieun the 10 digits of her phone number, watching as the shorter types them into her phone. She saves the contact under “Yeonwoo,” with a leaf emoji. Jieun doesn’t look like the kind of girl who uses many emojis, so it's kind of cute. Not that Yeonwoo can even see emojis on her flip phone—they just show up as black boxes with question marks in them. 

“I’ll text you so you have my number, too,” Jieun says. She doesn’t look up, fingers trained on the screen of her phone as she types out a short message. She presses a button that Yeonwoo assumes means send, as her phone subsequently vibrates within her pocket.

“Thanks,” Yeonwoo says, lightly. She can’t tell if her voice sounds like she’s going to pass out, or if she just feels that way. Regardless, Jieun’s gaze slides back up to her face as she tucks her phone into the pocket of her jacket.

“Get home safe,” Jieun says, sounding almost unexpectedly sweet. She pulls something out of her pocket—keys, Yeonwoo realizes as the metal glints in the streetlights. “Let me know if you need a ride,” Jieun offers, and clicks a button on the keys. The bike parked next to them beeps to life, and that’s when Yeonwoo belatedly realizes it’s Jieun’s own.

Conflicting forces of fear and intrigue war within Yeonwoo’s chest. “I’m good for now,” she says, her voice distant to her ears. Jieun gives her another small smile, and grabs the helmet strapped around the motorcycle’s gears. She slides it over her head naturally. Yeonwoo watches, entranced by the way Jieun’s small stature climbs on the vehicle and straddles its wide seat. Her fingers curl against the grip, and Yeonwoo again notices ink covering the backs of her hands, though it’s too dark to make out the exact design.

“I’ll see you later,” Jieun says, her helmet’s visor obscuring the top of her face. Yeonwoo’s eyes settle on its lower half: the stud of her labret piercing gleams, and her tongue peaks out to wet her lips.

Yeonwoo hasn’t experienced attraction this strong since she first met Choi Seungja, which is something that absolutely no one is allowed to know about, ever. (Yeonwoo had been a tiny first year with long hair and shaved legs, signing up for a course on multivariable calculus because it seemed like fun. There, she met the upperclassman economics major. Now she has short hair, hasn’t shaved since she was 19, and likes to imagine her future self in a loving relationship with a woman who takes good care of Yeonwoo and their shared plant/feline children. She secretly credits Seungja for at least 2 of these things.)

“Later,” Yeonwoo echoes, but the sound of the engine revving drowns it out. She watches as Jieun pulls out of her parking spot, before darting off into the empty road. Yeonwoo watches until the sleek black of her bike is impossible to tell apart from the pavement.

She stands there for a moment, before remembering that Jieun had sent her a text. She scoops her phone out of her pocket and flips it open.

_Reading suggestion: Merle Woo, “untitled,”_ is all the text says, the author and title written in Latin characters. Yeonwoo fumbles to add the phone number to her saved contacts. Normally she prefers to have people organized by first and last names on her contact list, but she realizes she never caught the other’s family name. She simply enters the characters for Jieun and clicks save.

The walk home is intuitive, for the most part. Yeonwoo is grateful she has all her limbs covered, but the chill still forces her to walk a bit faster than she might have otherwise. She’s grateful when she recognizes her street after a brisk 10 minutes; the last thing she would have wanted is to get stranded in the middle of Seoul at—three in the morning, the screen of her phone declares. So much for being home by midnight, she thinks to herself.

As much as Yeonwoo would love to climb in bed and fall right asleep, she thinks of Jieun’s text. She opens her laptop and pulls up Google. She searches for the work, and is able to find it after some quick research (she’s a librarian-in-training—it’s in her blood). As expected, the poem is written entirely in English. Yeonwoo briefly regrets her monolingualism.

She thinks about entering the poem into Naver translate, but instead copies the hyperlink. She remembers her earlier post-isolation guilt and sighs, opening the webpage to re-download the KKT app. Once she opens her long-closed account, she scrolls through her message history until she finds a conversation with Hana about a class they shared the previous year.

Yeonwoo pastes the hyperlink into her chat box. _"Can you translate this for me?"_ she types, wondering whether she should add a “please” or if that would be too formal. This is why Yeonwoo deleted her account in the first place; interacting with people has never been her strong suit.

She ultimately clicks send on the message as it is, and then decides she’ll deal with the response tomorrow. Hana is probably still at the party, and either way, she’s definitely too stoned to be expending any of the mental effort that translation involves. Yeonwoo flips her phone closed and sets it on her bedside table, pulling the covers above her head. Then she hears Geomi meow outside of her bedroom door, and remembers she has things she’s supposed to do before she sleeps, like feed her cat and brush her teeth.

Before she can give in to the urge to plug in some ASMR on her laptop and let it lure her to sleep, Geomi calls out again with his siren meow. Yeonwoo sighs and removes the covers from her head.

She shuffles out of bed, and sets about her nightly routine. By the time she gets back into her bed, her eyes drift closed as she hits the pillow, and she thinks of the ink on Jieun’s hands as she crosses over to sleep.

Yeonwoo wakes up with Geomi asleep at the foot on her bed, even though she’s pretty sure she had closed her bedroom door before becoming dead to the world. He always seems to find a way in when he wants to.

The owner yawns, lifting her torso off the bed as she stretches her arms above her head. From how it feels, her hair is sticking in every which direction. She runs her fingers through the strands and tries to push them back neatly. They immediately spring out from her touch, falling wherever they so please against her scalp. Fine, Yeonwoo thinks. Be that way.

She’s done brushing her teeth, taking a quick shower, and finally making her bed—to Geomi’s dismay, as he saunters off to probably sulk in Jia-li’s vacant room—before Yeonwoo turns her computer back on. She waters her plants as she waits the mandatory few minutes for her wallpaper to load, and then for the rest of her desktop to populate.

The KakaoTalk icon on her dock lights up with a red number 1 in the corner. Yeonwoo clicks the app open, feeling something like anticipation brew in her stomach. It could also be dairy, but she doesn’t remember having consumed any in the past day or so.

Her lactose-inspired musings trail off once the application has finished loading, and Hana’s chat bubble is highlighted with a new message. Right, Yeonwoo thinks. Time to get down to business.

_"lol omg….that’s a poem alright,"_ is all Hana had written, followed by a blushing emoji. Maybe Yeonwoo should have gone to Jessica. (That’s not true—Yeonwoo loves Jessica, but she’s also heard her self-written lyrics. Hana is undeniably the more articulate of the two anglophones.)

_"This sounds ominous,"_ Yeonwoo writes back, and hits enter. To her pleasant surprise, the typing bubble appears shortly afterwards on Hana’s side of the screen. It’s 10:30 am, according to the clock on her computer—she would have expected the other to be out until noon, considering the night she had before. Though maybe the same could be said about Yeonwoo herself.

_"nah it’s just like. actually gimme a few minutes, i wanna do it justice,"_ Hana eventually sends. Yeonwoo leans back against the wall next to her bed, waiting as another bubble signifies an incoming follow-up. _"also seungyeon says hi!"_

Yeonwoo smiles unconsciously. _"Hi, Seungyeon,"_ she writes back. She adds a KKT sticker.

Allowing Hana the time she requested for her translation, Yeonwoo sets about getting dressed. She looks through her closet, mentally scolding herself for her lack of variety in clothing before settling on a slightly orange turtleneck and one of her few non-corduroy pants. She stares at the full-length mirror outside her closet door and runs her hand through her hair. The wet strands behave now, and she can only hope that they’ll dry this way.

A “ping!” resonates from Yeonwoo’s computer, indicating a new message. She tries not to rush too eagerly to where the computer sits on her bed.

Hana had sent a Word document, which Yeonwoo swiftly downloads to her hard drive. She opens the file once it has been saved, and is treated to two columns—on the left, the original English text, and the right what she figures to be Hana’s Korean translation. She owes the younger for this.

Yeonwoo begins to read, and immediately understands Hana’s initial reaction.
    
    
      
    
    
    _"In the deepest night and a full moon,_  
    
    _at once riding the mare and being her_  
    
    _my own pumping broad wings, ascending higher—_  
    
    
    
    _My legs around that great horse’s neck_  
    
    _not riding_  
    
    _but my body singing down under_  
    
    _in front of the beautiful dark head_  
    
    _feeling her moist tongue in my center—"_  
    
    

At this point, Yeonwoo involuntarily slaps her laptop closed. She feels a burning in her cheeks and in her stomach that this time is definitely not embarrassment. _Oh,_ she thinks. So it’s _that_ kind of poem.

She paces around her bedroom for a moment. She goes to the kitchen, and makes herself a pot of tea. The boiling of her electric kettle feels like a literalization of the heat rising through her body, and she temporarily wishes she had just gone into medicine like her parents wanted.

When Yeonwoo returns to her room with a mug of black tea in her hands, Geomi has taken her place on the bed. She sits down next to him, sliding the laptop out from under his body. He meows and nudges his head against her leg. Typing in the password to unlock her computer with one hand, she uses her other to scratch the spot behind his ears that she knows he loves.

The poem stares back at her. Yeonwoo sighs, taking a final sip of her hot tea before setting it down on her bedside table. She finds where she had left off and continues reading.
    
    
      
    
    _"I am risking my life for these moments,_  
    
    _My head possibly dashed against the rocks._  
    
    
    
    _Now riding with our rhythms matching,_  
    
    _the exertion of her back’s muscles and_  
    
    _the mounting pulsations between my thighs—_  
    
    _Higher and soaring through mist and above mountains_  
    
    _shaped like jagged spires_  
    
    _the cold thin air ripping through my lungs—_  
    
    _We finish._  
    
    _And you lay your head on my thigh,_  
    
    _your wings enfolding my legs, and we rest."_
    

  


Wow, Yeonwoo thinks, and then says it aloud for good measure. Geomi meows in agreement.

She closes the document, bringing her back to the KakaoTalk screen. _"Wow,"_ she types there as well.

_"i kno lol,"_ she gets as a response. _"i’ve been googling & reading up on her, she’s super cool! AsAm lesbian socialists stay winning!! how did u find her?"_

_"jieun recommended the poem to me,"_ Yeonwoo types, and then takes a moment to consider that. Jieun recommended her a lesbian sex poem. Okay. She can think about this rationally and maturely.

_"oh she wanna fuck,"_ Hana helpfully supplies. Geomi stands up and walks on top of the keyboard, leaving a keysmash in his wake. Yeonwoo relates.

Well, Yeonwoo thinks. She has someone to text back. Or realistically, add on KakaoTalk, and _then_ message back.

She clicks the “add contact” button, using her other hand to grab her phone from the bedside table. She flips it open and navigates to her messages. At the top remains Jieun’s simple text, followed by Yeonwoo’s second most recent conversation—a short response from her mom about whether Yeonwoo intended to come home for Seollal three months ago.

That’s not important now, though. She clicks on Jieun’s message, and copies down the phone number written under the contact name into her KKT search. A profile pops up under the username _woozi_universefactory_.

Cute. She sends a request, hoping the picture of Geomi as her profile photo will be enough of an identifier for Jieun.

Before Yeonwoo can anxiously count the minutes until Jieun responds to her request, she hears the front door swing open. She jumps in place and slams her laptop shut, like a kid afraid to get caught. Geomi glares at her in protest of the jerky movement.

“I am the best friend ever,” Jia-li announces into the apartment, voice carrying even through Yeonwoo’s closed door. She hears the steady patter of Jieun’s shoes as she walks in the direction of Yeonwoo’s room, and then her door is being swung open.

“Knock before you come in,” Yeonwoo says automatically.

“Excuse you, I spent my morning hungover and helping my friend clean like, three hundred mason jars,” Jia-li announces, plopping down on the bed next to Geomi. He immediately curls into her, purring as her fingers drift between his ears in steady scratches. “I need my baby. Give me strength to go on, Spidercat.”

“That is definitely an exaggeration,” Yeonwoo protests. There is no way Jessica even owns three hundred mason jars, neo-hippy vegan or otherwise. “Besides, I could have been doing something.”

Jia-li rolls her eyes. “Please, honey. You haven’t gotten laid since at least last calendar year, and your vibrator is loud. I know when you’re ‘doing something.’’

Yeonwoo wants to die, which is how most conversations with her housemate end up going. “There are things people do that aren’t sex, you know,” she says, aware she’s fighting a losing battle.

“Things that get you this red in the face? Not in my experience,” Jia-li says. “Sica did say something about you going home with Woozi, but I gave up on that hope when I saw your keys by the door. If the rumours are true, a night with Woozi is a transcendental experience. You would _not_ be home before noon. Or out of bed at all.”

Yeonwoo internally curses Jessica’s gossip, while her lips involuntarily move to ask, “What rumours?”

Jia-li clicks her tongue, the way she loves to do when she thinks she’s winning something. (Jia-li is insufferable to play video games against.) “She’s allegedly the only person ever to get Seungja to bottom,” she whispers, covering Geomi’s ears with her hands.

“What does that even mean?” Yeonwoo asks. She’s never understood the need to label sexual relationships with language that implicitly codes a “giver” and a “receiver.” In her experience, the great thing about being a lesbian means taking an equal part in both.

“Topping and bottoming is not about penetrating, or positioning, or whatever you’re thinking it is,” Jia-li scolds. “In every sexual encounter, there is someone who takes control and someone who follows. There’s not always a clear division, but when there is...Like, Seungja is a self-proclaimed service top. The fact that your girl managed to make _her_ lie down and take it…” Jia-li marvels, fanning herself with her hand. Yeonwoo has to hold herself back from saying something like _she’s not my girl,_ knowing she’d only add fuel to the fire.

“Well, I could be a top,” Yeonwoo says. Jia-li immediately laughs.

“Oh, she’s a comedian now,” she coos in Geomi’s direction. Yeonwoo picks up a stuffed pillow and throws it at her. 

“Anyway,” Yeonwoo pointedly changes topic. “Movie night tonight? I think I still have Zootopia downloaded.”

“You always have Zootopia downloaded,” Jia-li says, which isn’t wrong. It’s a great movie. “I can’t tonight, though. Yanan and I are going to get dinner in some small Szechuan place, and then we’re gonna go smash in her dorm. Her group mates are doing some variety appearance tonight so we’ll be alllll alone.”

Yeonwoo feels a sudden headache arise. “Sometimes less information is better, Jia.”

“Sorry, babe. Have to make sure one of us is getting laid.”

Unfortunately, Jia-li being down for the count means that Yeonwoo is at a significant disadvantage with this whole 96-line movie night she had already invited Jieun to. She can only hope that Sooyoung will honour her drunken insistence.

She kicks Jia-li out of her room with the excuse that she’s going to call Sooyoung. Her roommate pouts but leaves, Geomi following in her wake. Yeonwoo rolls her eyes and picks up her phone, scrolling to Sooyoung’s contact ID. She presses the call button and places her phone against her ear.

The phone rings several times before an undoubtedly hungover Sooyoung picks it up. “Look who remembered she has a phone,” she chirps, with a fraction of her normal energy level. She almost sounds congested. Dread settles in Yeonwoo’s stomach.

“I just reopened my Kakao account, so you’re no longer allowed to act like I’m a hermit,” Yeonwoo tells her.

“‘Act like’ is being a bit generous, but I appreciate the effort,” Sooyoung laughs, and then coughs. The dread Yeonwoo had begun to feel triples in size. “Sorry, it was raining when I left Jisoo’s. I think I caught something.”

Yeonwoo internally curses Seoul spring weather. “Any chance you’d still be able to do 96-line movie night today? I can make you soup.” 

Her desperation must be evident—Yeonwoo very rarely offers to cook for others, usually being too lazy and broke to cook more than one serving at a time—because Sooyoung hums into the receiver. “Somin promised to keep me company. I told her she’ll get sick, too, but she said that’s what girlfriends are for. Isn’t that romantic?”

‘Romantic’ isn’t quite the word Yeonwoo would use, but Somin has never given her the impression of being someone who thinks far ahead of the moment. Again—Yeonwoo needs more single friends. “I will never forgive this betrayal,” she promises.

“I didn’t choose this immune system!” Sooyoung protests. “We can postpone for next weekend? You’ve never been this urgent about movie nights before. It’s been, like, three months.”

Yeonwoo debates avoiding the truth, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “I told Jieun last night she could join us. Uh—she’s also born in 96. I feel bad messaging her just to say like, nevermind about that.”

She hears what might be a yell on the other side of the phone, and then Sooyoung calling Somin’s name. “Yeonwoo made a friend!”

“I’m not _that_ bad,” Yeonwoo insists. “I just...don’t know what to say to her.”

Sooyoung hums into her receiver, while Somin loudly plops down on what Yeonwoo assumes to be Sooyoung’s bed. “It’s not like you’re cancelling, though. Tell her we can do next week instead.”

“This is sounding a bit homoerotic,” Somin says, sounding distant through the phone. Then she raises her voice to address Yeonwoo directly. “Is there a reason why you don’t want to postpone? Maybe...a gay one?”

Sometimes, Yeonwoo forgets that Somin is far more observant than her general demeanor indicates. “I wouldn’t really put it that way,” she stalls.

“That means yes,” Sooyoung translates. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place! Just tell her to come tonight, then. Watch something steamy. Boom.”

“You are the least helpful friends in the world,” Yeonwoo says.

“We love you! The power is in your hands, grasshopper,” Sooyoung answers. “Anyway, my sinuses feel like they’re about to explode, so I’m going to take a nap. I believe in you! Make 96-line proud!”

She hangs up before giving Yeonwoo time to protest. If nothing else, Sooyoung does know her well.

Yeonwoo sighs and flips her phone closed, placing it beside her on the bed. She grabs the laptop sitting abandoned and reluctantly opens it. She unlocks the screen, and is brought again to the KakaoTalk page. The server takes a moment to load, and then a notification pops up in the corner: woozi_universefactory has accepted her friend request.

Anxiety settles in her stomach, but she clicks on the notification anyway. It brings her to their empty conversation thread. She stares at it for a moment, gathering both the nerves and the words to type.

She begins with something diplomatic: _"Hey :) Jia-li and Sooyoung are both unable to do tonight after all, do you think you’d be free next weekend? Sorry for the inconvenience!"_ It feels wrong, though. She hits backspace, and then tries something completely different: _"Are you still free tonight? Jia-li and Sooyoung can’t make it after all, but I have Zootopia downloaded, if you want to watch it :)"_

It sounds like a come-on—Yeonwoo knows that. She bites her lip, and rereads the message until it no longer seems like a bad idea. And then she clicks send.

The ten minutes it takes for Jieun to respond are some of the most harrowing of Yeonwoo’s life, but then it comes: _"i love that film :) what time?"_ Short, yet sweet.

Yeonwoo thinks of Merle Woo’s “untitled,” and begins typing.

Yeonwoo’s intercom buzzes as she sets up her computer with the TV in her and Jia-li’s living room. She looks at the clock on the wall—exactly 6 pm, when she told Jieun to head over. Jia-li had left about an hour ago, and Yeonwoo has since busied herself with preparing snacks (a large bowl of popcorn and a smaller one holding Jia-li’s supply of emergency chocolate) and putting out an overly large selection of tea. She walks to the intercom on the wall and presses the button to unlock the downstairs door.

She busies herself with the HDMI cord as Jieun walks up the stairs to her apartment. After a minute of playing around with the mirroring settings to find the one that fits just right, she hears a knock against the front door. Butterflies immediately flutter within her stomach, and she clears her throat.

“The door’s unlocked!” she calls out. A moment later, she hears the telltale creak of the door being opened, and stands up from her crouch. She walks into the main hallway and is greeted to the site of Jieun leaning against the door, untying the shoelaces of some worn-down Timberlands. Geomi meanders into the room as well, before sauntering off to the newly-vacant living room.

Jieun looks up at the sound of her new company, making eye contact with Yeonwoo. She shoots a small smile. “Hey. Thanks for the invite. Sorry about Jia-li and Sooyoung,” she says.

Yeonwoo quickly shakes her head. “It’s fine. Jia-li has a hot date and Sooyoung is probably being pampered by Somin. Thanks for the poem, by the way. My English is shit, but I got Hana to translate it for me, and it was beautiful.” Maybe not the first adjective that comes to mind, but Yeonwoo is good at being diplomatic.

Something gentle settles in Jieun’s eyes, like she’s pleased that Yeonwoo had liked her recommendation. She’s wearing the same biker jacket as yesterday, on top of what seems to be a matching plain white sweatshirt and sweatpant ensemble. They sit baggy against her skin, again thwarting Yeonwoo’s mission to discover quite how stocky she is. She just _knows_ Jieun is a gym dyke. “She has some other amazing works, but that one’s my favourite,” Jieun says, pulling Yeonwoo out from her thoughts.

“I can see why,” Yeonwoo says, and then immediately regrets it. She flushes, and drags her fingers through her unruly hair. “Uh, you can take your jacket off, if you want. We have a coat rack in the living room.”

“Alright,” Jieun says. She shrugs the black material off her shoulders, exposing the rest of her tracksuit. Yeonwoo’s eyes naturally gravitate towards her hands, and she is finally able to identify the ink flowing on its skin in the shape of a lotus flower. Symbols adorn her fingers, some familiar to Yeonwoo, and others not. Her other hand is less decorated, through a simple collection of musical notes rest on the skin between her thumb and forefinger.

Yeonwoo remembers that she’s supposed to be playing host, and clears her throat. “You can follow me,” she says, turning around and heading back towards the living room. She flicks the light switch on, illuminating Geomi as he lies on the couch.

“So this is Mr. Geomi,” Jieun says. She hangs her jacket on the coat rack and walks towards the couch. Yeonwoo trails after her, trying to communicate telepathically to Geomi to be nice. She doesn’t need to worry, though; Jieun confidently raises her hand by his face, and he sniffs at it once, twice before nudging her to scratch between his ears.

“He’s technically mine and Jia-li’s. When we first saw him at the shelter she said he looked like a big spider, since he’s all black and hairy, and he was a pretty small kitten. So then we got him, and he became our Geomi,” Yeonwoo explains.

“It’s a cute name for a cat,” Jieun says, smiling at her again. She rubs circles against Geomi’s forehead, the black ink on her hand almost blending in against his fur. He purrs and settles deeper into the couch.

Yeonwoo smiles back, and reflexively pushes her hair from her forehead. She wishes she had time to freshen up beforehand—this is starting to feel more and more like a date, with the absence of her roommate running around the apartment. “Did you want to watch the movie now? Or we could talk first, or something. Do you want tea?” _Slow down, Yeonwoo._ Give her time to answer one question before throwing more at her.

“Tea sounds good,” Jieun says, taking Yeonwoo’s nervous energy in stride. “What do you have?”

Grateful now for her overpreparation, Yeonwoo grabs the bowl of tea bags she had set next to the popcorn. “It’s mostly black tea, but I have some green and herbal as well,” she says. 

“I’m not picky,” Jieun says, and chooses a bag of masala chai. Yeonwoo places the bowl back on the table, and picks a similar bag for herself.

“I’ll boil some water,” she says. “You can wait here if you’d like. I don’t think Geomi will let you leave, now.”

Jieun laughs, the sound soft and bringing her eyes into crescents. “That’s fine. We won’t talk about you while you’re away.”

Yeonwoo smiles back, ignoring the flush she feels spreading to her cheeks. “I don’t know, he’s a pretty bad gossip,” she teases. She hears Jieun’s chuckle follow her as she walks to the kitchen.

The electric kettle is already full, so she presses the switch to turn it on. While the water boils, she thinks of Jieun sitting down in her living room, wearing a white tracksuit and petting Geomi as he sheds all over her. Yeonwoo feels jittery, and jumps in spot when the kettle’s light turns off, indicating that the water is at full boil.

She grabs two mugs from the cabinet—one with a pattern of succulents, the other a plain black—and sets their tea bags inside. She pours water into each mug, and then picks them up to bring back into the living room.

Geomi has settled his head on Jieun’s lap, who continues scratching him through his purrs. She looks up at the sound of Yeonwoo approaching, and smiles again.

“He’s very sweet,” she says, rubbing her thumb on the spot behind his ear. He melts further into her.

“When he likes you. He absolutely hates Minjoo, and will try to steal Mingfei away from her whenever they visit,” Yeonwoo says, and hands over the decorative mug. Jieun laughs, then uses her free hand to grab the mug. She brings it to her lips. “Sorry, I forgot to ask whether you wanted milk or sugar,” Yeonwoo remembers.

“This is perfect,” Jieun assures her.

They sit in comfortable silence for a minute, Jieun petting Geomi while they both sip at their tea. Yeonwoo suddenly remembers why the other had come over, and sets her mug on the table. “Did you still want to watch the movie?” she asks.

“In a bit,” Jieun says, her hand slowing against Geomi’s head. She tilts her head to the side a bit, like she’s thinking something, but hasn’t decided yet whether she wants to say it. Yeonwoo wants her to.

Instead, Yeonwoo settles next to Jieun on the couch. Geomi glares at her from Jieun’s other side, then runs away. “Okay, be like that,” Yeonwoo mumbles, staring after him as he trots in the direction of Jieun’s empty room.

Jieun laughs her small laugh again. “He’s an all-or-nothing kind of cat, I guess. Doesn’t like to share,” she muses.

Yeonwoo hums in agreement. “He loves Jia-li’s girlfriend, though. I think that’s because she brings him treats whenever she comes.”

“I’ll have to take notes,” Jieun says. “I don’t want him to think I’m stealing you away from him.”

Yeonwoo’s heart jumps to her throat, and she picks up her mug to take a sip. The chai settles her down, giving her the ability to respond: “Is that what your goal was, after all?”

Jieun shrugs. She’s not looking at Yeonwoo, instead gazing at the plants decorating the windowsill. If Yeonwoo looks closely, she thinks there might be a blush dusting the other’s cheeks. “I thought that I made it pretty obvious,” she says.

“I’m not very good at reading people,” Yeonwoo confesses, though she can barely hear her own voice over the white noise in her ears. “And I’m even worse at like. Casual things. I’m not really much of a casual person.” 

“That’s fine,” Jieun says. She looks at Yeonwoo, now, and there’s a bit of confidence regained in her posture. “I don’t want something casual with you.”

“Okay,” Yeonwoo says, because she doesn’t know what else she can say.

“Okay,” Jieun echoes. She turns her torso so that they’re directly facing each other, and sets her mug back on the table. Yeonwoo follows suite.

“I really liked that poem you told me about,” Yeonwoo says again, sounding a bit breathless. Jieun raises a hand—her left, the one with the music notes—up to the curve of her cheek, and brushes stray strands of hair behind her ear. They immediately fall back into their preferred place, and Jieun rests her hand instead against Yeonwoo’s neck.

“I can show you more, if you’d like,” Jieun says, and Yeonwoo doesn’t think she’s talking just about poetry. Yeonwoo’s eyes drift closed, and a moment later, a warm pair of lips press against hers.

She’s seen Zootopia enough times, anyway. But this—the taste of chai on Jieun’s lips, the soft hair of her undercut as she runs her hand over Jieun’s scalp—this, she thinks she can get used to.

**Author's Note:**

> this is officially the longest oneshot i have ever written LOL...glad it could be these dykes who i steadily fell in love w over the course of writing.
> 
> hope you enjoyed it! very not proofread so pls let me know of any mistakes you catch <3 stream FEEL SPECIAL by twice 23/9


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